


Enter Sandwoman

by Supergeek21



Category: Good Omens (Radio), Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Canon Universe, Crowley is a Little Shit (Good Omens), Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fluff and Humor, Humor, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), M/M, Nosy Neighbor, Post-Canon, Self-Indulgent, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens), based on real life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-25 04:22:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30083412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Supergeek21/pseuds/Supergeek21
Summary: As a storm brews over the South Downs, Aziraphale and Crowley get an unannounced visit from their nosy neighbor.(An unofficial sequel to my first ever fanfic to celebrate my one-year anniversary as a fandom writer)
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 32





	Enter Sandwoman

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [To Drive Out a Snake](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23202022) by [Supergeek21](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Supergeek21/pseuds/Supergeek21). 



> Hello all! This bit of self-indulgent silly fluff is an unofficial sequal to my first Good Omens fanfic story "To Drive Out a Snake" which I published one year ago today! You don't have to read that fic to understand this one, but it's events involving St. Patrick are referenced. If you haven't read it, it is a very silly story involving Snake Crowley. 
> 
> The part of this story with the neighbor is based on real events which happened to a couple I know and it felt like something our Ineffable Idiots would be annoyed by, so I couldn't resist Fic-ifying it. 
> 
> Thank you to [PinkPenguinParade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkPenguinParade/profile) for beta-ing! :)
> 
> Title based stupidly off "Enter Sandman" by Metallica.

Aziraphale looked out the kitchen window at the back garden and took note of the darkening sky. The leaves of their small apple tree were rustling wildly in the wind, and off in the distance lightning was flashing in the gathering clouds. It reminded him of that first day on the wall.

The angel sighed as he finished making his cup of tea and headed towards the sitting room. Crowley was in the solarium, probably shouting at the plants again. Aziraphale had learned better than to interrupt those sessions. The demon had been antsy all day and Aziraphale suspected this and his playing about in the garage earlier,[1] were his best options for working it out of his system.[2]

Aziraphale was just settling into his favorite armchair when he heard the creak of the door opening, followed by a bang from the hall as it swung shut.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale called. He hadn’t heard his husband go back out, but why else…

His investigation was deemed moot before he’d managed to take four steps, as a woman’s voice called down the hall with an unmistakable Irish brogue “Hello! Aziraphale Dear? Anthony?”

“Oh Lord,” Aziraphale groaned, mentally making a note to ward the door against uninvited neighbors, just as the short, grey-haired human poked her head round the corner into the sitting room.

“There you are!”

“Good afternoon, Mrs. O’Sullivan,” Aziraphale said primly, his best inhospitable bookseller smile coming out of retirement. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I’ve told you, call me Mary Anne,” the woman said, not looking directly at Aziraphale, but rather glancing rapidly about the room. “Now, where is your Dear Anthony? I hope you haven’t sent the poor thing out in this ghastly weather.”

Aziraphale’s smile tightened. Not only was Mary Anne O’Sullivan the nosiest woman he’d met in the last two centuries, she had developed the infuriating habit--almost from day one of their acquaintance-- of both acting insultingly familiar with Aziraphale and flirting shamelessly with Crowley.[3] “My husband is perfectly capable of handling a little rain,” he said curtly, careful not to actually answer her question.

Her eyes went wide. “That’s why I’m here!” she said, sounding suddenly alarmed, as if she only now remembered she had come over for a reason. “It’s not just a wee bit o’ rain. The man on the radio said they had hail and high winds outside London. One family had a tree come down on their house.”

“Oh, my!” Aziraphale said, a hint of actual emotion sneaking into his voice. “That’s terrible.”

“Exactly. That’s why I came by, I wanted to warn ya’boys. D’ya have a place t’ shelter if things get bad?”

“Um…” Aziraphale wasn’t sure what to say. While the news of a damaging storm was unpleasant, if there was one thing he was certain of it was that he and Crowley would be perfectly safe. Even if the house blew over—not that they would ever allow it to-- they would ‘miraculously’ survive. “Never really thought about it I suppose.”

“Well, it’s a good thing I popped over then!”

As Mary Anne began to prattle on about her cousin in America and something or other about a tornado that almost hit her house, Aziraphale saw movement over the woman’s shoulder. _Crowley!_

The demon was sauntering down the hall towards the sitting room, looking significantly more relaxed than he had when he went into the solarium.[4] For a moment he thought he was about to be rescued. That is until Crowley got one foot halfway through the door, noticed their unexpected visitor, cringed, and stepped back into the hall in one fluid, snakelike movement.

If looks could kill, the wall Crowley had vanished behind would have been very dead indeed.

“…anyway, that’s why you always have to be prepared for an emergency. Wouldn’t want anything happening to you or that handsome young man of yours.”

Aziraphale ignored her potentially insulting tone,[5] desperate to get her out of his home so he could give his ‘handsome young man’ a piece of his mind. 

“I’m sure we’ll be fine,” he said, gesturing vaguely at the built-in bookshelves and brick fireplace. “Lots of heavy furnishings in here. We’ll make do.”

“Ah yes, of course, this room should work well,” she said, tapping the hearth. “Can’t be too careful though.”

Before Aziraphale could stop her—or even rightly determine what she was doing—Mary Anne had reached into the pocket of her cardigan, produced a small glass bottle, dumped its contents into her hand and begun throwing it around the room.

“My dear, woman, what on Earth are you doing?!” Aziraphale gasped helplessly as particles of _something_ flew threw the air and scattered around the bookshelves with a gentle plinking sound.

“Blessing the room of course,” she said. “Did it to my parlor before I came over. Better safe than sorry.”

Aziraphale fought down a wave of panic. _It’s not Holy Water! It’s not Holy Water!_ His brain chanted in a mantra.

“That’s not Holy Water though,” the words slipped out of his mind to his lips.

“No, ‘course not,” the woman replied, as if **that** suggestion were ridiculous. “That’d make a mess of your lovely woodwork. It’s sand.”

Aziraphale’s stomach twisted as another handful of sand hit a shelf of his first editions. This would be a nightmare to clean! The only fact that kept it from being the worst possible thing he could imagine was that at least sand wouldn’t obliterate his husband.[6]

“What? Why are you blessing my sitting room with sand?”

"It’s for protection. It’s the real thing, came from a beach in Ireland where St. Patrick himself used to preach. My mother showed me the place when I was a girl.”

“Well thank you very much Mary Anne, but I do believe our home is blessed enough now, please do stop. Wouldn’t want to waste it all on us.”

The woman made a token attempt to protest when a miraculously well-timed crack of thunder echoed through the house, and she once again seemed to remember the reason she was here.

“Well, would you listen to that!” Aziraphale said, sounding just a bit too happy for the circumstances and not caring a whit that his performance of politeness was slipping. “You should probably be getting home.”

The principality placed a steering hand on the woman’s shoulder and gently[7] walked her to the door. “Mind how you go. Do stay safe,” he said, before closing the cottage door firmly behind her and locking it.

Aziraphale staggered back to the sitting room and was still shaking his head in disbelief when he heard Crowley’s voice from behind him.

“Took you long enough to get her out of here,” the demon drawled. “I thought she’d never leave. What’d the loony old bat want this time? Come to drop off more inedible scones or--- Ga’yaah!”

Aziraphale spun around wide-eyed as Crowley yelped in pain and jumped back from the doorway.

“Crowley, what’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong?” Crowley spat. “What’s wrong is I feel like I just stepped on hot pins! Bloody Hell, Angel! I ditch you with a mad woman once and you bless the fucking floor?! Bit uncalled for in’it?”

“I did no such thing!” Aziraphale said indignantly. “Though it serves you right, abandoning me like that…”

“Not exactly proving your innocence with that attitude,” Crowley grumbled. “Besides, I got stuck with her two weeks ago when you were meeting that book collector. She had me trapped in the garden for two hours trying to get me to come look at her vegetable patch and force-feeding me some kind of dry cake.”

“How did it take you two hours to avoid seeing a vegetable garden?”

“Blessed if I know,” Crowley said with a baffled shrug. “She’s persistent! Probably thought if she could lure me away from you she could have me all to herself.” He shuddered. “Anyway, even after she gave up on her cabbage patch seduction plan, she just kept talking! Somehow it went from ‘I love what you’ve done with the landscaping,’ to ‘you’re so thin, doesn’t your husband feed you?’ to ‘I hate my daughter-in-law,’ and after a while I jus’ stopped listening.”

“Now it’s my fault you don’t eat?!” Aziraphale gasped.

“ **I** didn’t say that! She doesn’t listen to anything though!”

“Well, I’m well-aware of that! She was completely unhinged today. She came in here and asked where we would shelter if the storm got bad, then started throwing sand around like a human haboob.” Aziraphale could feel himself growing more and more agitated as he spoke. Everywhere he looked he spotted more and more sand!

“That may be completely mental, but it doesn’t explain why I can’t set foot in the room,” Crowley snapped, as he stepped back across the threshold only to step on another grain of sand and jump back.

“It was blessed sand,” Aziraphale groaned, dragging his hand down his face.

“Blesssssed?!” Crowley hissed. “Are you telling me that lunatic waltzed into our house with a jar of bloody consecrated ground?”

“Well, this wouldn’t be a problem if you would remember to lock the door when you’re done playing with the Bentley.”

“Don’t blame me! I’m the victim here.”

“You think you’re the only victim? Look at the state of these bookshelves. It’s going to take me days to get rid of all this mess…”

“What I don’t understand is where’d she even get something that powerful? Usually. the shit they bless is useless. We used to have contests down in Hell to see who could hold the most of it in their mouths or stand on it the longest. It felt like popping candy or static shocks.”

Aziraphale spared a second to picture that scene. “Who won?”

“Not really the point now, Angel.”

“Yes, yes, I’m sorry. I don’t know where she got it. She claimed it was from some beach in Ireland where St. Pat—”

Realization dawned on Aziraphale as Crowley’s eyes grew yellower and a spark of rage flared in them.

“Fucking St. Patrick and his stupid, bloody staff!” Crowley growled. 

Aziraphale buried his face in both hands now. If he’d ever harbored a thought there was a chance Crowley would let him live down giving Patrick Yeshua’s staff, it was now gone for at least another millennium.

“Well at least that explains it,” Crowley huffed. “Probably the same damned beach where he ‘drove me out.’ Good thing I’ve never gone back there. Never would have thought the stupid blessing would still be there. Why was he using that kind of fire power on a snake?”

Aziraphale was struggling for an answer when another crack of non-miraculous thunder rattled the windows, and the wind whipped a little more ferociously. Aziraphale peeked between his fingers to look at Crowley who was glowering at the floor, as if trying to vaporize the offending sand particles.

Aziraphale sighed. There was really no point being defensive. “I’m sorry, Dear Boy,” he said. “For… well, all of it I suppose. I never meant for you to get hurt. And I certainly never meant to let her bless anything in our home.”

Crowley looked up from the floor and took in the pathetic, shell-shocked look on his angel’s face. Instantaneously he felt some of his irritation melt away. He never could stay mad at him for long… not seriously anyway.

“S’not your fault, Angel,” he said. “Well, St. Patrick was absolutely your fault,” he added with a smirk, “but you couldn’t help Madame Insanity today.”

Aziraphale shuddered. “I really don’t know what I did to deserve her ‘friendship.’”

Crowley cackled. “The Almighty’s got a sick sense of humor, Aziraphale.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Aziraphale agreed with a furtive, somewhat judgmental glance upward. The look was met with a flash of lightning and the sudden onset of a downpour. Aziraphale made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a chuckle.

“I guess I should start cleaning this mess up,” he said with resignation.

Crowley shrugged. “Nah, ya’don’t have to just yet. I don’t need to get in there right away. What do you say we head back to the solarium and watch the storm? It’ll be like the wall.”

Aziraphale smiled. “That sounds lovely, my dear.”

He had just slid his arm around Crowley’s thin waist and begun walking back down the hall when a thought occurred to him. “Though I’m afraid you are going to have to tell me who won those contests in Hell…”

Crowley smirked. “Who do you think?”

* * *

[1] Aziraphale was fairly certain “working on the Bentley” was actually just an excuse for Crowley to sing along with his bebop music while he waxed the car, as that was the only maintenance he had ever known the demon to conduct on the automobile without magic, but he never bothered to say as much. If Crowley wanted to use this to preserve his front of being “cool” Aziraphale could let him have that.

[2] Better anyway, than the alternative of unleashing chaos on their neighbors, which **had** happened once or twice in the few years since they’d moved here, much to Aziraphale’s embarrassment. (Aziraphale still wasn’t sure the man who had once made a derogatory comment about his weight actually believed Crowley wasn’t responsible for the sudden infestation of pilfering rats in his home, but thankfully there wasn’t much evidence to prove the theory.)

[3] And _really_ wasn’t that just ridiculous? “Yes, of course I know Crowley is a 6,000-year-old temptation demon, but she doesn’t know that!” Aziraphale had once complained to Anathema. “She looks old enough to be his mother.” 

[4] _Poor plants,_ Aziraphale thought. He’d have to go check on them tonight after Crowley fell asleep.

[5] Crowley had long theorized that their neighbor suspected he was some sort of kept man because of Aziraphale’s slightly older appearance, and the angel had become paranoid about detecting hidden jabs in her comments.

[6] As clever as the humans were, nothing else they ever thought to bless could do fatal damage to a demon. Though a few things had caused Crowley significant discomfort over the years.

[7] By angelic standards

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I thrive on Kudos and Comments, so please feel free to leave them here or reach out on [Tumblr](https://supergeek21.tumblr.com/), [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/jessiemarie921/), or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/JessieMarie921)! I'd love to hear from you.
> 
> I want a to take a moment to be self-indulgently sentimental here. I wrote To Drive Out a Snake on a whim one year ago after spending six months falling deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole of Good Omens fanfiction. It was the first week of quarantine, and I'd just started working from home so I figured I had a little extra time on my hands and this silly idea came to me while I was eating St. Patrick's Day dinner with my family. Unfortunately, the story got longer than I expected and I ended up publishing it a day late. I got a little bit of positive feedback on the story and vaguely mused that I would maybe like to write another at some point. A month later I got laid off from my job and writing fanfic became my lifeline. My stories, and the community I found on social media while writing them, absolutely saved me from completely breaking down this summer as I was suddenly faced with mounting financial uncertainty and the prospect of unemployment. I have my job back now, but this has hands down been the roughest year of my life. I don't know how I would have gotten through it all without this fandom or the reinvigorated passion for creative writing it has sparked in me. I would never have predicted what today would bring a year ago, but I'm so glad I followed that wild lark of an idea and wrote that first story. I don't know why I decided that it was the story I needed to write immediately, or where I'd be now mentally if I hadn't. Perhaps it really is all just ineffable. Here's to all of you and a better year full of many more amazing fanfics and new friends. Thanks for being there for me.
> 
> Love,
> 
> Jessie


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